Our Broken Days
by The Silver Sparrow
Summary: You might know Max and Fang from Maximum Ride. They grew up in a lab, and have the bird D.N.A. but the similarities end there. Would Max's dream of finding her parents tear Max and Fang apart forever? And possibly end Max's life?
1. Chapter 1

**Hello! This is is my first fanfic and I hope that you like it. Please remember to review.**

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Our Broken Days.

Chapter one.

I'm flying, up in the air. The wind encasing me in a little streamline capsule. I can feel the muscles in my wings on my back, powerfully moving up and down to keep me up. That's right, wings. Black at the top and fading down to a lightly speckled white. I love this feeling, being up in the air. Streaking across the sky the wind in my face, whipping my hair back into ticklish whips. The air feels so nice against my face. Then I hear something, a bang. And all of a sudden there is this searing, white hot pain in my left wing. More bangs-gunshots, and more holes in my wings and more unbearable pain. I feel every bullet go through me breaking my delicate, hollow bones, ripping through cartilage and muscles. No longer able to hold myself up I start to fall; dive bombing for the ground. Heart pounding more than a mile a minute. I think '_this is it, this is how I die, falling.' _But I never hit the ground. From nowhere chains shoot up and grab me at my waist, wrists, ankles, neck, wings, and pull me down, slamming me into the ground. I try with all my might to break free, but all it does is sink deeper into my skin, indenting deep, bleeding grooves into where it's wrapped. Then a whitecoat popped up, with Fang in chains too. His wings unfurled, as black as a ravens'. Shining, almost purple. The whitecoat sinks a needle into Fang's arm and he screams a horrible inhuman scream. _No. no no no no no, not Fang_. I think. Before I could scream in protest the whitecoat says "I told you to be quiet!" he slapped Fang in the face. "Well then, if you can't cooperate, then I just have to get rid of you, you little defect". He pulls a gun "Say good bye you genetic accident" I hear a click as he slides the bullet into place and points it directly between his eyes. "NOOOOOOOO!" I scream, at the top of my lungs. "FAAAAANG, GO RUN NOOOOOO!" I scream so loud I'm pretty sure I ripped my vocal cords in two "FAAAAAANNNNGG!" I bolted up screaming, I'm surprised that I didn't break my neck sitting up so quickly. My blonde hair drenched with sweat, and the sheets sticking to me. I'm panting like I've been running a marathon. I can feel tears prickling at the back of my eyes like tiny little knives threatening to break through if I'm not careful, my chest rising and falling quickly under my purple tank top to try and gulp some air to make my breaths even. Fang bursts into my room. "What happened, are you okay? What's wrong?" he looks at me, and his face softens. "Another nightmare huh?" he asks. I nod, trying to gulp some air down. He comes over to my bed and I scoot over, my shaky, knobby arms barely holding me up. He comes over and sits down; he unfurls his dark wings and wrapped them around us both, creating a small private little room. I don't get it. I'm the oldest, we're both fourteen, but my birthday is a couple months before his so he elected me leader. It's only the two of us here so I thought that we don't need a leader. But he made me a leader anyway. But he acts more leaderly than me sometimes. Like now. He wrapped me around the back with one arm and around my front with the other, giving me a sideways hug. "Okay, why don't you tell me what nightmare it is. We can talk about it" so I told him. Every little gut wrenching detail; about me being shot down, the chains, the gun to his head. My eyes start to get misty, and my throat hurts horribly from holding back the tears and the screaming. It's all quiet as he rubs my back. Then I just burst out crying. Don't get me wrong, I don't cry, never, never ever. But now I just can't take it anymore. I just can't. For as long as I can remember I have been horrible nightmares. I collapsed into Fang's chest, hugging him around the waist. "I just can't take it anymore, Fang. I just can't. The nightmares, the fear of being captured by the whitecoats again. I can't." I cry into his chest. My crumpled, shuddering body against his strong, warm, comforting one. Jeez… I feel so embarrassed, so weird, so weak like this. I'm not weak. I'm Maximum Ride. I don't cry, I'm one of the strongest people you'll ever meet probably, Fang has told me that. But now… I don't know, I feel like a tiny little three year old. I feel so weak like this. "It's okay, Max. It's going to be all okay. Those nightmares, they're not real. Just dreams, okay? There aren't any more white coats around, we escaped, okay? They're all gone." I nodded against his chest. Breathing deeply, trying to calm myself, taking in his scent, like the wind in your face, like flying through a cloud. He takes my chin between his thumb and fore finger, and tilts my head up so I have to look at his eyes. His eyes such a deep brown, they're almost black. I can see that they're full of concern, and something else I can't explain. "You're going to be okay". I nodded again, wiping the tears from my eyes.

"Jeez. I'm sorry, I feel like a cry baby." I said.

"No it's okay, just, try and get some sleep, okay?"

"Okay, I'll try." Then we just sat there. Saying nothing, just sitting in this little cave formed by his fourteen foot wing span. I feel like I can say anything to Fang. I've grown up with him since I can remember. Now, you see, we were raised in a lab. Our D.N.A being grafted with avian D.N.A, 98% human and 2% bird. So we have wings and our bones are hollow and we have little air sacs in our lungs so we can actually fly like a bird in the air. We don't know if we have parents or anything like that. As long as we remember we've been in the lab we call the School, being kept in dog crates, literal dog crates. And almost every, like, two minutes they would bring us out and do tests on strength, endurance. They would do surgery on us to see what makes us tick. They would also do emotional testing. Show us pictures and videos of the most horrible things, I don't even want to think about the images that they would show us. Never giving us food I was a thin as a toothpick, Fang too. Sometimes they would so surgeries on us without putting us under or giving us pain killers to swallow before so those assholes can see how well we handle pain. And let me tell you having someone cut you open while awake and strapped down to a table isn't exactly a walk in the park. Then one day, while the whitecoats were on a lunch break, flaunting their food in our faces, one of the idiots left Fang and my cage door open. So we saw this as an opportunity to take off, we were twelve then. But there were no escape routes. If we escape now we would just be flying through the halls lost and desperate. But we had to escape. We were dangerously close to dying of hunger or thirst or something. So then finally our escape route showed itself to us by a whitecoat, I remember it so clearly, she said "Jesus, it's hot in here, let me open the window" so she got up and opened the window directly in front of us. Idiot. So we burst out of there like a bat outta hell. And man did it feel good. The wind in our faces, the sun on our backs, it was amazing. So we said goodbye and good riddance to the School and found an empty house in the middle of the Arizona desert, hunkered down and here we are two years later. And I'm still having nightmares about that hell-hole. They get worse and worse every time. And sometimes they're so scary I just can't help myself but cry. Because it's a nightmare, a dream and I can't get rid of it. And I know I can't get rid of it, and it drives me insane. But I fell exhausted from the crying and I shiver at the thought of the School. So I move closer to Fang and we start to fall into a deep, warm sleep.

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**Hope you likes my first fanfic chapter. Please leave your** **reviews. **

**-phoenix**


	2. Chapter 2

Our Broken Days

Chapter Two

I woke up still tangled to Fang, his wings still around us both. I looked at his face; it's so calm, so peaceful like this. Jeez, he really looks like a little kid like this, not a fourteen year old. I used to be taller than him, but these past few months he changed a lot. His wingspan went from being two feet smaller than mine, to almost a foot bigger. And he got taller too; my nose is now where his chin is. I smiled to myself thinking about him. We started getting really close this year. I don't know what has happened, really. When we escaped and found this empty home, we promised that we wouldn't fall for each other, not to ruin our friendship or anything. But since a couple months ago, we started breaking that promise. We would be acting like a couple of lovers sometimes. And even though I wasn't supposed to, I really liked it like that. The way he holds me is just so… right, you know? The way his body fills the hollows of mine, and vice-versa. My heart skips a beat when he looks at me, with those dark, impassive eyes. I could never tell what's going on behind those eyes, unless he wants me to know. I loved the way he could just read me; know what I'm thinking with one glance, like it's smeared across my face. I really want to tell him how I feel. I really, _really_ do. I spend almost every night thinking on how I'm going to tell him, well if I'm not having a nightmare, that is. But I think that this is the day, I'm gonna tell him… maybe. The thought of telling him sends hot chills down my spine and I shiver, waking him up. His eyes flutter open and he looks at me.

"What are you smiling about?" he asks.

"What? I not smiling!" I say covering my mouth.

"C'mon" he says as his face gets closer and closer to mine until our noses are touching. "What are you thinking about, Max?" we are so close his lips lightly brush mine as he speaks. I unfurl my wings beneath his, creating a smaller space for us. _This is it. _I think, _I have to tell him, right here, right now. _

"It's okay, you can tell me anything" he says. My heart is hammering against my ribs, threatening to explode out of my chest. I take a deep breath to steady myself, though it doesn't do much good.

"Hey, you know that promise we made, when we escaped, to not fall for each other?" I ask, words tumbling out of my mouth like prickly pine needled falling from my tongue.

"Yeah, I remember" he responds. I can feel his heart beating against his chest. It's beating as fast and as hard as mine. That's good….right? His hand grabs mine and he laces his finger through mine and squeezes. And I squeeze back. I bite my lip and look into his eyes.

"You wanna break it?" I (finally) ask. He just smiles, the edges of his eyes crinkle. His black hair almost covers his eyes.

"I thought you'd never ask." He says, and then he leans down and kisses my cheek.

"Really?" I squeak out, at a loss for words.

"Yes. I wanted to tell you first, but I just didn't know how"

"I -" but I get interrupted by an enormous grumble from my tummy.

"You hungry?" Fang says, laughing.

"Yeah" I say.

"Me too" so he gets up, retracting his wings into the small hollows we have in our backs, through the big slits in his soft, black shirt. He leaves and hangs a left to go toward the stairs and into the kitchen. After he left I think: _What the frick just happened?_ I can still feel the pressure of his chest against mine and the softness of his lips brushing against mine. I felt awesome to get this off my back, to finally tell Fang about this. And it felt awesome-_er _to find out that he feels the same way. I lightly touch the spot on my cheek where he kissed me, smile, take a deep breath, retract my wings, get up, and head out the door, looking forward to the rest of the day.

I entered the kitchen and Fang was cooking up some pancakes. I may be a girl, but trust me; you do not want me to cook. I do better with fighting things. You see, in the School, they put me and Fang through a series of… well, let's just say… classes, of fight training. Their motives, I have no idea why, I hope those idiots noticed that if they did this, then we would be able to kick their asses, right? Anyway, they put us through this so we would learn how to defend ourselves and fight. When they crossed our D.N.A with a birds', we sort of developed some strange qualities with this, like being stronger and faster than the average, oh… I don't know… about three fully grown men. As in, if a normal man punched someone else in the chest, it would just probably knock the wind out of the guy. But if one of us were to punch you in the chest, we would shatter your ribcage. So they might as well put our strange abilities to good use. So we learned how to fight, and let me tell you right now, I have a damn good right hook, so if you mess with me, or Fang, I will hurt you. Anyway we spend our days here in the Middle of Nowhere, Arizona; flying through the air, and training ourselves to fight further than those nit-wits at the School did, so when they finally find us and show up here to take us back to the labs so they can do more ridiculous experiments and tests on us, we can kick their sorry, sadistic butts.

"Pancake?" Fang asks.

"Sure" I say. He plops a perfectly fluffy pancake down onto my plate as I sit down in one of the mismatched chairs around our square white table. I put a pat of butter onto my pancake and pour syrup onto it. As I much on my pancake, sitting across from Fang I think: _What ever happened to my parents? Surely I was born _somewhere_ from _someone_, because I'm pretty sure those bastards at the School can't be smart enough to create a baby from nothing. _Then suddenly I drop my fork onto my plate, and look up at Fang, who has a 'what-the-hell?' expression on his face. "Fang…" I say, "You ever wonder what happened to our parents?"

"Yeah, sure, lots of times, because I figured that those bastards at the School can't be smart enough to create a baby from nothing" he answers.

"Exactly" I can't believe that I haven't thought of this before. "Well, do you want to find our parents?"

"Yeah, we should totally do that! Find out who we actually came from. That would be so awesome!" he says, his eyes lighting up.

"Yeah, but the question is, where were we born?"

"In a hospital?"

"Probably, but there are billions of hospitals around the country, we can't just crash into every hospital there is and ask if they have our birth certificates."

"Yeah, so the only place that would have our birth records is…." His eyes widen is horror as he realizes the answer to the question.

"The School" we say in unison.


	3. Chapter 3

**Here's chapter 3! Enjoy!**

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Our Broken Days

Chapter 3

"Oh no." I said at the realization of who might have our actual birth records. "No no no no no no, I'm _not _back to that _hell. _Fang I can't, that place is the reason that I have these nightmares every night. They just keep getting scarier and scarier, and I'm not going back there."

"I know I don't want to go back either, but don't you want to see who our parents are? Besides we can kick their butts when we get there, we know that we can fight them." He protested.

"But, Fang, don't you remember what they did to us there? Fang, they cut us open, while we were _awake_!" I say instinctively touching the big scar running down the length I my stomach. "Fang, they were the reason I tried to _kill myself_ back there!"

***FLASHBACK***

And instantly, my mind flashed back to when Fang and I were eleven. They threw us back into our cages after they were done doing some emotional testing. I was crying my eyeballs out while Fang was staring at the floor of his cage with tears streaming down his cheeks. Those bastards made us cry—I'm pretty sure for their own entertainment this time—once again. They broke us down, I'll admit it. But what those dumbasses didn't know was when they went after me when I tried to fly out of the emotional testing room, and into the surgery room across from it, is that I secretly grabbed a scalpel from the tiny tin table and hid it in the small pocket of the crappy night gowns they gave us. When they left us, I took it out and Fang must've noticed because he looked at me.

"What are you going to do with that?" he asked, horrified. Back then we didn't have names. I was subject 10445-A and Fang was 10446-A so we picked names for ourselves. I picked Maximum, and Fang couldn't decide between Dune and Fang, do I just chose for him, I chose Fang, obviously. But he looked at me and then the small knife, then back at me. "You wouldn't. Please, Max. Don't do it. If you go then I'll have no one here. Please, Max, it's not worth it." Once again he read me like an open book with just glance at my eyes.

"I have too, Fang. I can't take it anymore, I just can't. We'll never escape and I don't want to die at the hands of these bastards. I have to go now I just _can't take it_. I need to be free now, and right now, this is the only option. I'm sick of being their puppet, their _toy_" I spat. "I can't take the pain anymore. Surely _nothing_ is worse than _this." _Through this sheer night gown you can see every scar on my body. The one running down my stomach, there is one running the down the length of my spine. When they would train us to fight, or make us do physical tests, they would whip us, creating angry, bleeding scars all over my body, my legs, arms, back… _anything_ would be better than this.

"Please, Max, don't. You can't leave me alone; I can't live if you're not going to. This would be worse for me, living without you here. It would be worse that any physical pain that they cause us. Just…please, don't do this. Please. For me." Fang tried to speak between sobs. He's really crying now, like this is actually causing him pain. Then I started to cry too. I couldn't stand to see him like this. He put his fingers through the bars of his cage. I did too and we touched fingers. That was when we realized what we felt for each other. But I'm sorry, Fang. My mind is already made up.

"Okay, I won't" I lied. I would wait for him to fall asleep at night, or at least turn around so I can do it. I put the scalpel into my pocket, lay down and sighed.

Night fell upon us and Fang was turned to the opposite side, but I know that he wasn't sleeping; I mean who could sleep in a place like this? So I have to do this as quietly as possible. I sat up, leaning on the bars of my cage and took the scalpel out of my pocket. I took a deep breath, my heart is beating so hard and fast it could've cracked one of my ribs. Then I started crying silently. _I'm so sorry, Fang. But I have_ _to do this_. I think. I raised my left hand, wrist up, took another deep breath, pressed the blade into my wrist, and dragged it diagonally down. The pain was excruciating, but I thought: _don't worry; it'll all be over soon. The pain will be gone. _But it was too much to handle, so I screamed, I held my wrist with my other hand, trying to suppress the other scream, but I let out a squeak. Fang turned around and saw me holding my left wrist, and a shiny liquid pouring over my hand.

"HEEEEY, HEY, SOMEONE, HELP, HELP HER!" he shouted. There was always some whitecoats here during the middle of the night. Someone rushed over and opened my cage and pulled me out; the bloody scalpel clattering to the floor. Everything went fuzzy and there were voices shouting, but they were all echo-ey. Then I blacked out.

The next thing I knew, I was back in my cage, with the crusted blood on the floor and my wrist bandaged up and stitched. Figured that they wouldn't want their little toy to break, but just bend to the point of madness. Fang gave me a good hard lecture, and even slapped me for making such a stupid decision. But we eventually got over it, and a year later we escaped.

***PRESENT***

And two years later that memory still haunts me and the scar is still on my wrist.

"Yes, I remember" Fang said, his head bowed low, and his voice is deep and soft, it scares me when he talks like this. It reminds me of just how strong and powerful he is. And it scares me. "I remember perfectly well. But we can bring weapons, guns; we can pop their heads off if they try to touch us." He said, snapping his mind out of the pitiful memory.

"Yeah, but where are we gonna get guns?" I asked. He held up his finger to say, "One second" and rushed off to the end of the hall. "Hey! What are you doing?" I shouted down the hall; craning my neck to see him digging around the closet. He came back carrying two handguns, and hands one to me. I hold it at my fingertips like it's the most dangerous thing in the world. "Where in the seven hells did you get this?" "Oh, you know… places." He says with one of those rare, beautiful Fang – smiles. I'm impressed.

"Sooo… we have… guns. That we don't know how to shoot" I say. That wiped the smiled off his face.

"Well… when in doubt…. Internet!" he said as he leaped to the computer. Jesus, I thought that I would never see _Fang, _the usually unemotional, distant, mysterious, Fang, _leap. _Oh? How do we have a computer, you ask? Well with a few trips to the nearest junkyard (which is like fifty miles away) and some clever wiring, we have a computer, with exceptional internet, and a fully operational television. I guess you pick up some technology tips when you grow up in a lab for practically your whole life.

So with some research, and a couple of videos, we learned how to shoot a gun, it's pretty easy, just point and squeeze the trigger. It's actually fun, _whoa, _I tell myself _don't get trigger happy, Max. A trigger happy Max, is a dangerous Max._ Now that I can shoot a gun that makes me a triple threat: I can shoot, I can fly, and I can kick a fully grown man's butt. Nice, Max, nice.

"So, you ready?" Fang asks.

"Let's to it" I say as I push a bullet magazine into my gun. Now that I have a gun, that really reassures me about going back there. We go to the back of the house; we stop at the cliff's edge, and look down, same as always, about 500 feet down. We stand side by side; we look at each other, and smile. We take a few steps back, run and jump. I'm free falling with Fang, than I snap my wings out and _woosh! _The wind catches and pulls me up. I start to move them up and down, lifting me up. I see Fang beside me, his dark wings shining next to mine. The tip of my wing brushes his and I shiver. I can feel the gun in my pocket. He holds out his hand, and I take it, remembering the promise that we made, or more like broke.

"Are you ready to kick some whitecoat butt?" Fang asks.

"Hell yes."

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**What did you think? Please leave your reviews.**

**-pheonix :)**


	4. Chapter 4

**Here it is, the fourth chapter. Hope you like it! **

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Our Broken Days

Chapter 4

This is crazy. This is absolutely, completely, _totally_, insane. I can't believe that I'm actually doing this. I'm going back to the place that almost drove me to lunacy, that tortured me, well, Fang and me, since we can remember, to try to get our birth records so we can find out who our parents are. Jeezum, this has been a productive morning. We learned how to shoot a gun, made up a plan – well sort of a plan, but I'll explain that later – to steal our birth records from the School, and I finally confessed to Fang. And he feels the same way about that. Ohmigod, I just can't stop thinking about him sometimes. His eyes, his hair, his body, his smell, his touch. It's so…. _mesmerizing._ He is just so perfect, at least in my opinion. His eyes are so dark sometimes I can barely tell where the iris stops and the pupil begins. With just one look, he can silence a crowd. His touch is so warm, so light like feathers, like smoke, like fog, like all other insubstantial things. The way he scratches the space between my wings makes me shiver, my wings flutter, my breath catch. Sometimes we would curl up on the couch, and watch a movie or something, further opening the crack in the now shattered promise. I would lean against him and feel his heartbeat against mw wings. When I'm with him my heart beats so shatteringly loud, I'm afraid he could hear it. When I'm with him I feel…normal. All the nightmares and bad memories and the depression and the lashings and tests and operations and the scars are forgotten and I actually feel normal. Like my wings just melt away in his touch, then before out broken promise, I would get scared, and I have this funny reflex, like when some people get scared they scream or jump. Well we have been trained not to scream or jump in dangerous situations, but my reflex is, well, I just suddenly just unfurl my wings, sometimes thwaping Fang in the head, or slapping him in the face with the ends of my wings. It's embarrassing, right? But Fang thinks it's cute. Sometimes I was so close to telling him. I would start my sentences like 'hey Fang I …' or 'you know what, Fang….?' and he would look at me with those fierce eyes and I would just lose it, I would get so nervous and stop right there, and nothing happens. Add let me tell you right now, I have absolutely _no_ idea how I was able to finish my sentence this morning. I just guess it was the moment, cradled in our little wing cave, holding each other, our faces so close, I could of just slid my hand onto his neck and press his lips to mine. And believe you me, I really wanted to. And I think, he wanted to, too. And it was just…oh God, just so… perfect. That little moment right there. I wish I could just freeze time and stay like that forever. And I know it's crazy, but I'm going back to the School, I can't believe it, I really don't want to, but with the gun in my pocket, and the look Fang gave me. His eyes were the most light and open I have ever seen them since we escaped that cesspool. The excitement in his eyes, well, I just had to. I don't want to disappoint him. After all, while we were in the lab, he would always be the quieter, he would always let them beat him and not fight them because he didn't want to make things harder kind of person. While I was the kind of person who would take every chance to try to get out of there, to give them hell until they couldn't handle me anymore kind of person. And there, whenever you would misbehave, you know, like refuse to do a test, try to fly away, or punch a whitecoat in the face, they would whip you. And I mean _whip_ you, like tie your wrists to a post and lash you with a braided whip. That's why I have so much more scars on my body than Fang. I have one in the back of my neck, where the last vertebrae of your back is, there is a perfect, red whispy 'x' mark on it.

"Max… Earth to Max…. heelloOOo." Fang says, tapping my shoulder, awakening me from my deep thoughts. He's flipped over on his back, his wings beating backwards, so he can tap me on the shoulder using his other hand, because he's using the other one to hold mine. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I was just… thinking. Why?" I ask

"Because you're shaking" he says, looking down at the hand he's holding.

"What? No." I say looking at my other hand, it is shaking, and very hard I might add.

"Are you scared?" he asks right – side up again.

"What? No, I'm not—"

"Because I am" he cuts me off. "I'm really scared, Max. What if they capture us again? I don't think that I can take any more of that. It feels like we just got out, and we're going back in" he laughed a nervous laugh. "You think that we should go back home?" I look into his eyes, he really is scared, I can practically see the memories reflecting in his eyes. I have never seen him like this, it worries me. He looks like the scared seven year old I saw through the bars of my cage the first time we spoke at the lab.

"But, don't you want to find our parents? Find out who we came from?"

"Well, yeah, but, Max what if they catch us again?"

"Don't be silly, we have guns, we can pop them off if they try to touch us." I try and reassure him. Jeez, it's like we switched roles. Back at home, I was the apprehensive one, and he was the confident one. But now he started to worry and I started to gain confidence.

"Yeah, but we don't have much of a plan do we?"

"Yes, so let's make up one right now. What do we have right now?"

"We crash in, fly around, find our records, and fly out"

"Wow. That plan sucks, so let's land somewhere, and take a break, make up our plan"

"Yeah, ok. Hey there is a ledge covered by a cave thingy over there." He points toward the left, to a hole in the red, sandy desert rock formations.

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We landed, in the cave thingish. It started getting dark so we made a little campfire and made a new plan. We know that the lab in in California, so we've been flying south. We basically mapped out the School from memory, you see, right across one of the training rooms they would carry our cages to was a file room. When I tried to escape one day, I flew into that room, and found a cabinet that said "the bird project, subject information." So I figured that Fang and I were "the bird project" so I took a peek inside the file cabinet. Inside there were two fat files that the tabs said "10045-A and 10046-A" that was us, that's what we called each other before we made our selves names. I didn't have a chance to look at it because the whitecoats broke the lock on the door and dragged me out by my ankles while I tried to dig my nails into the floor and screaming bloody murder. That training room was room number 3901, third floor, west side. And I have no idea how I remembered that.

So after we made our plan, we decided to get some sleep. Or at least try. We huddled in a corner, curled up against each other, our wings wrapping us up to make that little, furry cave. I curled up into the hollow of Fang's stomach and he curled around me, putting an arm around me, pulling me into him. I grabbed his waist and pulled him close, his chin on top of my head. He lowered his head and I raised my chin, our lips grazing against each other's.

"Good night" he whispered and pulled my head into his, our lips crashing, our teeth clattering together, and then softening. I tensed up at first because of surprise, but melted into the kiss, I can feel his lips smile against mine; his hand slides down to my lower back and pulled our stomachs together. I reach up and run my fingers through his hair while he rubs his thumb on my jawline. He pulls back

"I think that this is –"

"Way overdue" I finish for him

"Yep" he says and we resume kissing. His lips were soft against mine; we were in perfect harmony, his lips parting then coming back together while he rubs my back. He pulls back and starts laughing, a chuckle at first, but growing, which causes me to laugh too; it wasn't long before we were laughing hysterically on the cave floor. We finally calm down and face each other.

"This is crazy" he says

"Yeah, this is totally insane" I agree.

"We better get some rest if we want to get our records tomorrow"

"Good night then" I say and curled back into his stomach. He curled back around me with an arm on my back. I smiled to myself thinking about Fang and I; and where we're going to be in the future. Then it hit me

"Hey, Fang" I say, hoping that he's still awake.

"Yeah?"

"You know that we probably have different parents, right?" I ask slowly.

"Yeah, I have realized that. Let's make the most of what time we have together before we find our parents."

"Fang, I don't want to leave you"

"I don't want to leave you either, how about this; we live with our parents for a month, then we go back for a month and go back to live with our parents for a month and back again. We'll see each other every other month, okay? I nodded against his chest

"Okay." I say.

"Now let's go to sleep." And just like that, we both fell into a sweet, warm slumber.

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**Hope you liked it! Please leave a review.**

**-hugs, pheonix (^^)**


	5. Chapter 5

**Here is the long awaited chapter 5! Enjoy!**

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Our Broken Days

Chapter 5

I woke up on the cold cave floor, curled into Fang. I opened my eyes and realized where I was and what I was doing, and then smiled to myself thinking of last night. I yawned, stretched and got up. Fang woke up right after me. He stretched out his knobby limbs across the cave floor and hopped up.

"Good morning, Max." he says running his hand through his hair. I rummaged the backpack that he carried while we were flying. He grabbed me around the waist and looked me in the eyes, so I looped my arms around his neck.

"Good morning" I say, and he leaned down to quickly kiss my mouth. Then I wrinkled my nose, "Brush your teeth." And bent down to slide out of his grip, went into the backpack to hand him a water bottle, some toothpaste and his green toothbrush. I grabbed my own purple brush and headed to the ledge of the cave and started brushing. We sat in silence; the only sound is the toothbrushes scraping against our teeth, our legs dangling over the edge. He takes the water bottle, breaks the seal, sips and spits out the foamy water to the desert below. He hands me the bottle, then chuckled.

"What?" I ask, my question muffled and distorted by the toothpaste stuff in my mouth.

"You look like a rabid animal when you brush your teeth." He says between chuckles.

"Mmmhhmmh" I growl because I'm swishing a mouth full of water around my mouth, and I slap his upper arm with the back of my hand signaling him to shut up and stop making fun of me. I spit out the water to the sands below and cap the bottle. "C'mon, we better eat up if we want to get those records today." I grab his hand and haul him up into our cave again.

We ate some energy bars that we packed, we don't need to eat much since we grew up in the School and we learned how to make the little food in our stomachs last almost all day. We're used to not eating much, so whenever we try to eat a big meal, we feel sick because we're still not used to eating full meals. We stretch and practice some of our fighting skills before we take off, heading for the School. Since we're part bird, we have that built – in navigating system that birds have. We know that the School's somewhere in southern California, so we head south, leaving out back pack in the cave so when we get out – if we get out—we can go back there and rest from the epic battle between two bird kids and a million sadistic idiots that's probably going to happen there. So we went over our plan again. Since from what I remember there are no windows in that file room I flew into that day. So were going to crash in to the training room across of it, and fly into that room, grab the files and fly back out the window we came in from. And hopefully not get captured during this. So we're flying in the air now, our hands tangled into each other's. Our wings beating in unison.

"Hey, you know that there's probably going to be cameras on the outside so the School, and a guy behind a bunch of little TV screens watching, in case of some unusual activity. What are we gonna do about that?" Fang asks.

"I don't know…." I respond, and then my mouth broke out into a twisted grin. "I have a wicked plan" I say.

"What?" he asks apprehensively, narrowing his eyes, not sure if he wants to hear this. He is always the more practical, reasonable one of us. While I'm the more, creative, and well…. how do I put this…. crazy….? Yeah, that seems fitting. I'm the one who would make up these ridiculous plans. Well I am a great story teller, who's to say I'm making this whole thing up. No, don't be crazy, why would I make this up? That's horrible.

"How about we find the room where the cameras are being watched, bust in there, knock out the people who are watching it so they won't tell anyone that we're here, and get out of there, find the file room and get on with the rest of the plan." He just stared at me, straight faced and silent.

"Max, that is insane" he monotonously said.

"Yeah, but do you have any other plans?" I ask. He looked straight ahead for a moment.

"No" he admitted.

"Soooo…. We go with…."

"We go with your plan" he said while rubbing his face with the hand that's not holing mine.

"Finally! He agrees with my ludicrous plans! WOOOOOOO!" I screamed while I let go of Fang and started twirling around in the air, with my arms outstretched. Fang started laughing as I spun.

"Okay, okay, it's not that big of a deal, calm down and come back down here" he says. I have floated a couple of feet upward while spinning.

"But you never agree with my plans" I say as I float back down to him and grab his hand.

"Yeah, because it's either too crazy or we have a more practical alternate plan. Right now, we have no other plan for getting around the cameras so we have to trust your mental instability and go with this" he says trying to get his laughter under control.

"Hey, I'm mentally stable"

"You sure about that, Max"

"Yes" he raises an eyebrow. "Maybe" I admit.

"Anyway, let's just concentrate on getting there"

"Alright"

By the time we get there, it's around noon. We figured that it would be in a secluded area, and it wasn't that hard to find, really. I mean it's a huge building smack dab in the middle of a forest. It's not hard to miss from the air. So we landed in a tree and rested for a while. We ate more energy bars and prepared ourselves to go in there. So after a couple minutes of this, fang said "You ready?"

"As I'll ever be" I responded. I took a deep breath and we both jumped off of the tree, we flew as fast as possible to the roof of the place and hovered there. Who knows what kind of security system they adapted in the past couple of years?

"Okay, let's find that training room first; remember where it is, then find the security room, knock out those buffoons, than grab our records and get out." Fang went over again. I nodded once. Our bird instincts told us which side is the east side was the east side. We found it quickly; I peered in, the same as always, this was the training room with the gigantic maze in it. Just like a mouse, they would put us in a life size maze and told us to find our way out or else they would heat the metal floor to burn our feet, and if we don't make it out in a certain amount of time, they don't give us dinner, which was usually a small loaf of bread, five carrot sticks and a small glass of water. It made me sick to look at this room again. Then I noticed something strange. There were four cages in the middle of the room. I motioned to Fang and he looked in with me. Through the glass we can see the four cages with something—no—someone, inside. I looked closer, and gasped. There were four people in there, the first cage, nearest to the window was a girl with tawny skin and big brown eyes, her cage said 10047-A. she looks about eleven. The next one has a boy with big blue eyes and light blonde hair, 10048-A, he looks eight. Next to him was a girl, same features as the blonde boy, but her hair was long and curly, about six, siblings I guessed, 10049-A. And the last cage had a boy with strawberry blonde hair he looks fourteen, like us. 10050-A But his eyes were weird. They were a milky grey, shiny, like a rainbow trout's scales. He's blind. And the worst part… they all had wings. Wings, just like Fang and I. They were bird kids. We rolled away along the wall, tearing our gaze from the other kids in there. We said nothing but shot each other fierce glances. With his eyes he told me to get the heck away from here and go find the recording room. So we did, the recording room wasn't hard to find. Actually, it was right next to the training room. Jesus it's like they built this place to be broken into. We stayed at the sides of the window. I whispered: "One…Two… Three" and we both crashed into the room. There were two people to deal with in this room. So I took the guy closest and Fang took the other. Before the man could do anything I rushed up to him and slammed a roundhouse kick into the side of his head, sending him to the floor, knocked out cold. I looked over at Fang and he had made light work with his guy. We blew out of that room and smashed into the maze room, the four kids looking up at us, even the blind one. The whitecoats were surprised to see us. I recognized some of them. We floated up at the celling, looking around to find the door that leads in to the hallway, and into the file room.

"Well, well, well…" one of them said, "what do we have here? Subject 10045-A and 10046-A. did you miss us?" he said mockingly

"Oh, shut up." I said rolling my eyes, annoyed. But really I'm scared as hell. Fang and I descended upon them there were four of them. Two for each, I rushed at one of the female ones, and punched her in the jaw, sending her flopping backwards, crashing to the floor. The other female Fang was battling and won, kicking her side. The male one that spoke acme running towards me, I swung my fist but he caught it, frozen in that moment we stared at each other, both surprised that he blocked me. Then a smile creeped up my lips and he looked confused, still holding my clenched fist. I grabbed his forearm with my other hand and flung him over me to the other side, I let go of him and sent him flying and crashing into the opposite wall, knocking him out. I've been waiting to try that on someone. The four kids in the cages just looked at us with wide eyes. I joined Fang in the battle of the last whitecoat, by sneaking up behind him and chopping him in the back of his neck. He dropped all wobbly like to the floor. We looked at each other and high – fived.

"Fang, free those kids while I get the records." I say while striding toward the door.

"But our –"

"Just do it!" I yelled cutting him off. I gave him a fierce look over my shoulder. He just nodded and walked over to the first cage with the tawny skinned girl. I yanked open the door and peeked out, empty. I walked over to the room and pulled open the door. A great big beige cabinet appeared before me. I went over and found the drawer marked "the bird project – subject information" just as I remember. I yanked open the drawer and there were four more files in there, most likely the other kids in there. I spotted the ones with our numbers on it. I walked out and into the training room again, looking at the collapsed bodies on the floor. I saw Fang release the last kid. The blind one. He thanked him and gave him a hug. He flew through the open window. Fang looked at me, "You got them?" he asked.

"Right here" I say as I wave them in the air.

"Let's go then." He took my hand and we jumped out the window.

Finally away from the School, it took us a while to get back home. It was the middle of the night when we got to our home in Arizona. We walked through the door and I flopped the records onto the table and collapsed onto the couch. Fang sat next to me, and looked into my eyes.

"We did it" he said.

"Yeah, we did, we'll look at them tomorrow, because right now, I'm pooped." I said with a sigh.

"Yeah, let's get some sleep" Fang agreed. And right there we fell asleep on the couch.

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**Hope you liked it! Sorry for any typos and for the late update, i went to the beach for the week, so i had not time to write. And sad news guys, the man who plays Mermaid Man in Spongebob, has sadly passed away, today July 8th 2012. May he reat in peace. He was 95 years old. **

**Anyway, please review, comment or PM me. Tell me what you think.**

**-Hugs,PR (^^)**


	6. Chapter 6

Our Broken Days

Chapter 6

I woke up on the couch sitting up, Fang's upside down. The memories from last night flooded my brain. I got up and stretched, and bent my neck to the side until I heard a pop. Jeez, my back hurts, _Note to self: never sleep on the couch again._ I bent down and shook Fang awake, he opened his eyes, and I started laughing.

"What's so funny?" he asked groggily.

"You're upside down." I say between chuckles.

"Wah?" he craned his neck to see below him, which was impossible because his head is on the floor, his neck and the small of his back at some awkward angle and his legs and feet pointing upwards on the back of the couch. Then he saw the ridiculous position he was in. "Oh crap" he said, then swung his legs over the couch and stood up. Then collapsed. I looked at him with alert, trying to see if he's hurt. He got on his hands and knees and looked at me, smiling. "My legs fell asleep" he said laughing. I relaxed and helped him sit on the couch to get the feeling back into his legs. Once he could stand again we got up, and did our usual morning routine, shower, brush hair and teeth and dress. I dressed in a green tank top and black sweat pants that I cut into shorts halfway up my thighs, Fang in a purple v – neck t – shirt and black jeans. It's all dark colors with this guy, what's up with that? Anyway we sat down at the table in the middle of the kitchen, the records staring us in the face. We looked up at each other

"How about after breakfast, I'm hungry" I offered.

"Alright" Fang said with a face that resembles a child that just got denied a toy. Makes me laugh. He got to the kitchen and started making pancakes, as usual. I sat down, restraining myself from ripping open those files. I probably have a different name; do I even want a different name? Fang too, probably has a different name. What if my name is something dorky? Or what if I don't have a _last_ name? What if I don't have a family? Well I want a family, a brother or sister, and a mom and a dad, grandparents and cousins. What if Fang doesn't have a family? What would he do? Would he cry? I know I would. Would he just shrug it off and be okay with it? I wouldn't be okay. I mean I've spent twelve years of my life in a horrible lab being tested, operated on, injected with stuff, exhausted, starved, nearly dehydrated, injured, broken, depressed and lashed with a freaking _whip; _trying so hard to escape and find some kind of records of us since that day I found the file in that room, and only to find out that I have no one that I belong to (well except Fang, of course). No one to call mom or dad, that's just cruel… too cruel.

Fang interrupted my thoughts by flopping a steamy pancake onto my plate. He sat down and poured syrup onto his pancake and passing it to me. I drenched my cake with it.

"Jesus, you want some pancake with that syrup?" he asked

"Shut up, Fang." I snapped

"Whoa, somebody's in a bad mood today"

I glared at him

He rose his hands in mock surrender "So-rry, here, you just need a hug" he gets up and gives me a sideways hug; I slowly rise and hug him back. We stay there for a long time, wrapped in each other's arms, it feels like we're in a little bubble, like the universe just stops, I can feel the energy buzzing and fizzing around us. Then just like that something clicked in my mind, it all makes sense. Everything is so much clearer. But I can't tell him now.

"Fang, I'm scared."

"Me too, I've been thinking what if I don't have a family? What would I do?"

"Exactly my thoughts" I said with a little nervous laugh into his chest. I turned my ear to his chest, listening to his even heartbeat. It soothes me.

"Max, you're shaking, look, if you don't want to open the files – "

"No. I want to open them. It's just that, if I want to go live with my parents, then I have to leave you, I don't want to leave you, Fang. I lo…let's go open them." I separate from him and grab the files on the table. Then all of a sudden we are shrouded in darkness.

The lights went out.

_Lovely._

I looked outside through the window. The big black line running from our house to a big wooden post off in the distance; has broken in two. I looked down and an electrocuted squirrel is on the ground.

"Seriously?' I yell at the celling. "A squirrel, in this part of Arizona?" I sigh and drop my head into my hand, rub my face and pick up my head. "Do we have any flashlights or candles around here?"

"I don't think we have a flashlight but I do think that we have a couple of candles lying around somewhere" said Fang.

"Okay, you look for candles and I look for some matches or a lighter or something"

So we disperse and search around the house. I start in the kitchen, rummaging around in the drawers for something to light the candles with. Fang's digging around in the closet for candles. And let me tell you, it is not fun looking for stuff in complete darkness. I have hit my hip on the corner of the kitchen island at least five times, hit my head on the cabinets, and tripped twice. I finally got my bearings as I rose from the floor from my third time sending my face down to meet it. I open one drawer and find a box of matches in it. A little blue thing with a swimming mermaid on it, _Mermaid's Fire_ it said. That's weird. I mean, first of all, mermaids don't exist; second of all, mermaids live under water, so how are you supposed to make a fire under water.

Oh. My. God.

I'm going insane.

Here I am, standing in the kitchen, judging a matchbox. _Judging a matchbox_. I mean who does that? A crazy person, that's who, only someone completely insane would be doing this.

"I'm going crazy" I say, rubbing my face. "I'm going insane, that's it. I officially declare myself insane. Or maybe it's all the stress that I'm going through right now."

I pause for a minute

"And now I'm talking to myself."

"You say something, Max?" I hear Fang ask, his voice far away and muffled from his head being in the closet.

"No, hey I found a match box, you got some candles?"

"Yeah I found like ten in here."

So we met up in my room, there are no windows in my room, for some reason. I thought that was stupid. We lit all the candles in a semi-circle, me and Fang leaning up against my bed, the files laid out in front of us. The flames like fat orange apples dancing in the breeze from the vent in the celling. And the big candles in dense jars, all multicolored, sitting and burning away.

Fang takes a deep breath and looks at me, the flames highlighting the peaks in his face, making his features sharp and pointed. God, he looks so….so…. I don't know how to say it. He looks beautiful, but with the flames; all distorted.

So strange.

That's it.

Strange.

Strangely beautiful.

Freakishly beautiful.

The kind of beautiful that you just can't explain.

But beautiful all the same.

"You ready?" he asks, awakening me from my thoughts.

I take a deep breath, "As I'll ever be"

We take the edge of the folder and flip it over at the same time. In the folder is one of those orange—ey envelopes.

It was labeled 'Subject Birth Records'.

We looked at each other with wide eyes. I reached for mine with a visibly shaking hand, my heart pounding so hard it makes my chest ache. Then I stop, my fingers just brushing the envelope in the semi darkness.

"I can't do it." I admit.

"Okay, how about this…" Fang offers, "I open yours and you open mine?"

I nod and he hands his envelope to me his hand shaking too, even though he seems so calm. I fold up the little metal flats and open the flap, Fang does too. I pull out a thick piece of stationary.

His birth certificate.

I slide it out and read his name.

His real name.

I smiled.

"What? What is it?" Fang asks me with wide eyes and baited breath. I look up at him slowly.

"Ethan Benjamin Luna"

He lets out a breath.

"Really? He asks. I hand it to him and he reads the name, slowly mouthing it. "I like it" he says.

"Me too, _Ethan_" I chuckle and poke him in the ribs.

"Hey, no making fun or else I don't read you name"

"Sorry." I quickly apologize. Than he reaches for my envelope, then I suddenly tense up. I get all nervous and my heart starts to pound again. He slides out the certificate and lets out a poof – of – air laugh.

"What, what is it? Let me see." I said. I feel all panicky inside. He turns to me slowly, and my nervousness melts as those dark eyes look at me.

"Lena Charlotte Bell"

"What?" I said smiling. He hands me the paper. "Lena Charlotte Bell, born of George and Brooke Bell, on February 11th, 1998. What's your birthday, and who are your parents?" I ask.

"May 15th 1998. Ha! I knew I was older than you!"

"Yeah, by like two months. And your parents?"

"David and Jenifer Luna"

"Fang?" I ask

"Yeah?" he answers, tearing his gaze from his birth certificate.

"We have parents" I say

"Yeah, we do" he says. Than we just sit there, staring at each other. This went on for a long time. Then I decided to tell him that thing I found out before. I look down at my hands, take a deep breath and look up again.

"Fa-"

"Max" he says, cutting me off.

"Yeah?"

"I have something to tell you" I feel….. I feel…. Well I don't know how I feel right now, I can't even describe how I feel right now, and my thoughts are too jumbled up right now to think.

"Max…. I really have no idea how to say this right now, so I'm just going to say it." He drew his face up close to mine and pulled me onto his lap so our stomachs are touching. "Maximum Ride…. or Lena Bell" he says, he's so used to calling me Max that he forgot that I had another name. He takes a deep breath.

"I love you"

I smiled

"You took the words right out of my mouth" then I leaned forward and sent out lips crashing together. I pulled away. "You know what? Just call me Max" I say

"You can keep calling me Fang, if you want" he says

"I think I'll stick with Fang." Then I kissed him again, the candles softly glowing, creating strange shadows around us. I wrapped my arms around his neck and he wrapped his arms around my waist. I ran my hands down his back, feeling his wings tucked into his back. I feet him smile beneath my lips, he started leaning down toward the floor and I followed.

We stay like that for a long time, I have no idea how much time had passed. Now we just lay in my bed, next to each other, both on our sides, facing each other. Fang's playing with my hair, looping strands of my dirty blonde locks between his fingers. We were about to fall asleep, but just before we did Fang – er – Ethan said: "I love you….. Lena Bell"

"I love you too….. Ethan Luna"

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**Did you like it? I hope you did! **

**Reviews, comments and PMs please!**

**- Hugs, PR.**


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